Recent content by Rocket354

Yes. Yesterday in particular was a wet, rainy day, and I've never been anywhere near as humid (and I've been to Alabama, amongst many other places!).

Is Emily ultimately responsible for the product Matchroom puts on display? If so, it is most definitely a management issue. If her head ref is incapable of making correct calls then she absolutely needs to be correcting that in one way or another. Related to waxgate, one thing I noticed in...

They went to the video. There must have been at least 5 mins, maybe close to 10 mins of deliberation on Marcel's part. It was truly bizarre. Everyone around me watched the replays on the screen and thought it was a foul. Everyone, that is, except for apparently Marcel. And that includes the ref...

Marcel has made other bad calls and does not appear to be learning or getting trained at any point. Why should we assume this time it's different?

I can only guess: 1) it's getting late 2) no more vietnamese left in the tournament 3) no more Fedor #2 is probably the big one. There was a big crowd earlier today.

...you mean like Sky? Or did you mean someone even worse?

My only response to matchroom being forced to adhere to their unpublished rules is: no they really aren't. They let Fedor onto team USA just what, two years after he was on team Europe? Why? Because that suited their interests. No SVB at Reyes means one of two things: 1) They are really...

But SVB is the clearly better marketing opportunity. Strange criteria all around. If there's really no SVB, Filler, Ko, or Kaci, especially given the recent selections, then this will be a totally bewildering, second-rate production.

Wow, I had no idea. Pulling in the young crowd, I guess. Now, explain the Sky (over SVB) pick. I'm so glad I paid lots of money to go see the best marketing opportunities battle it out.

Bustamante was here at the Hanoi open making an appearance earlier today. He was walking and talking with Emily. I wonder how much marketing strategy went into that AJ Manas decision. I'm also a bit surprised that picking Manas would be seen as a positive marketing move. I mean there has to be...

To be fair, he won the match he complained about soft breaking. Unless there was one besides the US open semi- (quarter-?) final.

Yes. At one point, Fedor said something to the ref. It wasn't clear what it was, but then the ref talked with Antonakis. The guy next to me said he thought it was because of slow play. He (the guy next to me) actually started timing Antonakis' shots and sure enough many of them were 1 min+. I'm...

Brutal day for the 830+ players. FSR, Fedor, Chua, Raga are all out, all against sub-800 players, some below it by quite a bit. Arseni deserved every inch of his win vs FSR. Watch his runout on rack 14, then watch him confidently dominate til the end. George Antonakis v Fedor was a little less...

That match is up against a lot of vietnamese matches, and, until a few minutes ago, the Fedor match. Plenty of spectators around for those.

I'm far from being a fire marshal, but I suspect it's not up to US codes. There are definitely exits, but fewer and tighter than one typically sees in US venues. Of course, the sparkly background sheets might be disguising other exits. I've not examined that closely.